New World Symphony hints at brave new future of classical music

October 20, 2013|John von Rhein

Chicago has its Civic Orchestra, Miami Beach its New World Symphony. Each is an innovative incubator of gifted young instrumentalists on the fast track to professional careers in symphony orchestras across the nation.

Not content with only being America's graduate orchestral academy, the New World Symphony also functions as a kind of high-tech music education laboratory. As such, the ensemble serves a key objective of conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, the ensemble's founder and artistic director: To give alumni from some of America's top music schools the skills they need to save classical music from itself, in the sense of shedding its hidebound ways and revivifying itself as an art form more relevant to the early 21st century.

The stimulating concert Thomas and his young charges presented for their local debut Saturday night at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, part of the hall's 10th anniversary celebration, proved how far imaginative programming and novel presentation can go toward chipping away at calcified classical tradition. This is what the orchestra of tomorrow could and should sound like.

Italian and Italian-influenced music from the last century was the program's central focus; just as important was the idea of artistic collaboration. The concert was built around the Chicago premiere of the late Italian composer Niccolo Castiglioni's "Inverno In-ver" (1973), complete with a striking video installation devised by Thomas and British director and video artist Netia Jones, and jointly commissioned by the orchestra and the Harris Theater.

Castiglioni's piece is a suite of 11 "musical poems" for chamber orchestra made up of sound-impressions of winter ("inverno" being the Italian word for winter) and, at times, death. Distant echoes of Italian Baroque dances flit through the glinting, crystalline textures of an instrumental palette tinged with high woodwinds, piano, xylophone and other bright, brittle percussion. The postmodern harmonic language moves deftly between tonality and atonality, each "frozen" miniature falling arrestingly on the ear.

The program book identified Jones as a "live video performer," and her video exegesis, which the artist cued to the musical performance from her laptop computer, seemed both a natural outgrowth of and complement to Castiglioni's icy vignettes. Three clusters of various-sized video screens were hung above and at the sides of the stage to display fluid, closeup images of snowflakes, snowscapes and, at one point, the silhouette of a human figure tumbling from screen to screen, accompanied by piercing blasts of woodwinds.

It was all extremely effective: The visual and aural elements enhanced rather than detracted from each other. The live players even got to join in, at several junctures waving tiny flashlights as if to suggest fireflies dancing in a nocturnal landscape.

Chicago and Miami Beach further joined hands in the works by Luciano Berio and Igor Stravinsky that framed the Castiglioni piece.

Violin students from the Music Institute of Chicago joined with violin-playing mentors from Thomas' orchestra to perform nine of the 34 Duets for Two Violins Berio wrote between 1979 and 1983 to honor various musical friends and forebears (including Pierre Boulez and Bruno Maderna). No duet is much longer than two minutes and each is a model of varied and ingenious craftsmanship, culminating in "Edoardo," for which all 18 fiddlers joined in a torrent of rapid tremolo bowing.

Bravo to Thomas for bringing us the complete Stravinsky "Pulcinella" rather than just the suite that's performed far more often. Recent scholarship has determined that there is less Pergolesi in the 18th century Italian music Stravinsky adapted for his neoclassical "ballet with song" than was thought at the time of its creation (1920), but no matter: What is wonderful about the piece is how fully he entered into the witty and charming spirit of the originals while remaining entirely himself.

Thomas led a crisp, colorful and airy performance that made one glad to hear the additional music. A spirit of orchestral chamber music prevailed in the many dialogues between string quintet and/or individual instruments and the larger ensemble. One was especially struck by the refinement of detail the conductor brought to such sections as the droll duet between trombone and double bass.

The three vocal soloists — mezzo-soprano Peabody Southwell, tenor Matthew Newlin and bass-baritone Rod Nelman — all have appeared with Chicago Opera Theater and all delivered their delightful songs beautifully and expressively.

Might the Harris Theater management invite the New World Symphony back on an annual basis? The notion is well worth considering.